Associate ProfessorJo Raphael

Research Interests:
* Drama Education
* Drama/Arts pedagogy and practice
* Applied drama and applied theatre
* Drama for learning across the curriculum
* Arts, Activism and Anthropocene challenges
* Drama, theatre and disability
* Inclusive education and teaching for diversity
* Teacher education - pre and in-service

I welcome research interest from prospective research students in the
following areas:
* Arts Education
* Drama Education
* Drama/Arts pedagogy and practice
* Applied drama and applied theatre
* Drama, theatre and disability
* Inclusive education and teaching for diversity
* Teacher education

Research methodologies:
* Reflection on Practice
* Participatory Research Methodologies
* Participatory Action Research
* Arts-based Research (drama, performance, visual, narrative)
* Autoethnography
* Collaborative Arts-based Autoethnography (CABAE)

Research Motivation
Jo Raphael's research is strongly influenced by principles of social justice.
She believes in the potential of research to be transformative. Not only
through the outcomes of research but in the process of doing research. Jo has
developed inclusive participatory research approaches including participatory
action research. She is committed to reciprocity in the researcher participant
relationship with the communities she has worked within. Participants become
co-researchers and this has been particularly important in her research with
people with disabilities whose voices are seldom heard. Her research has
provided access for people with intellectual disabilities to have a say within
universities and professional sites to which they do not normally have access.

Jo draws on multiple and mixed methods--whatever is likely to be most
effective and appropriate for participants. Amongst these are arts-based
methodologies. As a drama educator Jo naturally draws upon the potential of
drama as simultaneously pedagogy and a process of inquiry. She has also made
systematic use of artistic processes including poetry, story, movement and
images as a way of understanding experience both for herself as researcher and
for the participants in her studies.

Over arching these methodologies is a commitment to reflective practitioner
research. As a drama educator and a teacher educator, Jo is naturally disposed
to reflection on practice. Every project is also seen as an opportunity to
further reflect on her own practice and share these understandings with the
professional communities she works within. In her desire to reflect
differently and more deeply on her practice, Jo draws upon post-structuralist
conceptual frameworks as tools to help disrupt habits of thinking. In
particular she has drawn upon concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari, in
order to shift and promote new understandings of her practice.